Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)

"I don’t think we celebrate the Balfour Declaration but I think we have to mark it because I think it was a turning point in the history of that area and I think probably the most important way of marking it is to recognise Palestine"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uJERCQjQ5U

And here's (hat tip: Christians United for Israel UK) Ms Thornberry in July, clashing with Conservative MPs regarding the the Middle East, Corbyn's "friends" and the recognition of a Palestinian state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msh2SqpQvh8

Is it any wonder, then, that Marvellous Melanie sees Thornberry's stance as emblematic of the malevolence Corbyn's Labour Party is evincing towards Israel and by extension towards the Jewish People?

To quote from Ms Phillips's denunciation:

'When Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to attend this week’s dinner in London to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a dinner to which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited as the guest of Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, Corbyn said Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry would attend in his place.

Now remarks made by Thornberry inescapably imply that, like Corbyn, she too regrets the fact that Israel was ever created. Instead she supports its mortal enemies whose agenda remains Israel’s destruction....

Her support for the existence of Israel is, by her own lights, conditional on the existence of a state of Palestine. She thus displays her profound ignorance of Jewish, Arab and Middle Eastern history by assuming that people called the Palestinians were entitled to the same promise of a national homeland. ....

And of course, a Palestine state alongside Israel has been on offer repeatedly since 1936 – yet it has been the Arabs and “Palestinians” who have refused it while the Jews have always accepted it. There could be a state of Palestine tomorrow if the Palestinians would accept Israel’s right to exist alongside it. Instead, they want such a state solely in order to destroy Israel altogether....'

Meanwhile, anti-Israel Jewish-blogger-married-to-a-Christian-vicar Robert Cohen ("Micah's Paradigm Shift") and his friends on social media are celebrating a letter he wrote to the Manchester University authorities:

Monday, 30 October 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The centenary of the Balfour Declaration issued on 2 November 1917 is being used to unleash a barrage of falsehoods designed to denigrate the Jewish people and delegitimise the Jewish State of Israel.

Among those current egregious falsehoods:

1. Raja Zaatry – an official of the High Follow-up Committee – the Arab community’s leadership body in Israel – has asserted:

“In 1917 less than 10% of the population was Jewish and more than 90% Arab. The British gave to the Jews something that didn’t belong to them”

The British Government gave nothing to the Jews in 1917 other than its “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations" expressed in the Balfour Declaration. Palestine in 1917 still remained under Turkey’s rule as part of the 400 years old Ottoman Empire.

2. Sir Vincent Fean – British consul general to Jerusalem between 2010 and 2014 – reportedly said the UK should uphold its commitment to helping achieve a two-state solution promised in the Balfour Declaration – if only to prevent radicalization at home – stating

“I firmly believe that this unresolved issue contributes to radicalization in our own country among the Muslim community and if only for that self-interested reason we should think of doing something about it.”

The Balfour Declaration promised no two-state solution.

Islamic State has caused Muslim radicalization in Britain.

3. The Balfour Apology Campaign and the Palestinian Return Centre – protesting the Royal Albert Hall being used to host a Balfour Declaration Centenary event on 7 November – have urged the public to sign a letter containing the following statement:

“The 1917 Balfour Declaration directly caused the 1948 Arab-Israeli War where Israel ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians and then established a state in Palestine.”

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was directly caused by six Arab armies from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq invading Palestine in total violation of international law. No invasion – no war.

4. University of Manchester academic Nick Thoburn grabbed some media space by reportedly saying he was dismayed that the University had allowed a Balfour Declaration commemoration event to take place on its campus – adding for good measure:

"Lord Balfour (declared), chillingly, that Zionism was 'of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land'"

“The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”

Nick appears to have been engaging in deliberate spin.

Nick should be looking for another job outside academia if this is the standard of his intellectual expertise.

“And let us remember, there are two halves of Balfour, the second half of which has not been fulfilled. There is therefore unfinished business.”

Ambassador Allen was spouting pure unadulterated fiction.

There are no two halves of the Balfour Declaration.

There is however “unfinished business”: allocating sovereignty in the last remaining 5 per cent of Palestine between Jordan and Israel – the two successor States in Palestine – as was first envisaged by Article 25 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

The sooner this business is concluded – the sooner the Arab-Jewish conflict can be resolved.

It surely is time to end 100 years of relentlessly hounding 15 million Jews world-wide and falsely and misleadingly lambasting their tiny Jewish State.

Sunday, 29 October 2017

That being so, I doubt that the SPLC is going to put this olde tyme southern preacher man on its long and ever more ludicrous list of fomenters of hate, even though his misogyny is egregiously at odds with the SPLC's leftist outlook and with American values.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvZEDu2D_RQ

As this journalist and author Karl Zinsmeister explains in this video by Prager University, the SPLC "bills itself as a watchdog of hate groups" but its own behaviour eloquently challenges that boast:

'At a Quds Day event in Auckland, New Zealand, held on June 23, Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Shafie said that Israel and the Zionist regime "hide behind a fake phenomenon" of the Holocaust and that it was a conspiracy to infiltrate the Islamic countries. He said that Quds Day was established "to deal a powerful punch to the mouth of the cancerous tumor known as evil Israel," and cited Imam Khomeini as saying that "if every Muslim were to spit in the face of Israel, Israel would drown." Iranian diplomat Hormoz Ghahremani, presented at the event as the first secretary of the Iranian Embassy in New Zealand, said that the "sinister phenomena of terrorism and extremism in the region" were "fueled and fanned by the enemies of Islam and the Zionist circles." Community elder Sayed Taghi Derhami said that Israel was a "cancerous tumor" that had to be "surgically removed." The event was organized by the Islamic Ahlulbayt Foundation of New Zealand, in Auckland, and was posted on its YouTube channel.'

Thursday, 26 October 2017

Our old friend the ex-vicar of Virginia Water, nowadays CEO of the
Israel-bashing Peacemaker Mediators "charity", has been attending a Christian
conference in Hong Kong on the theme of "Love Thy Neighbour".

"This
year’s conference theme is ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ and there is no more
relevant time in history than right now to take a fresh look at Jesus'
timeless truth. With social, political, racial, and economic issues at
stake, we need to be reminded that Mark 12:30-31 is still our greatest
call to Worship and Justice.

Across
2 full days, 6 main sessions, 24 workshops, and 8 different workshop
streams, we will open up a conversation on the prophetic call we carry
to reach out toward the other in compassion, justice, and love.

During
the conference we will hear from international justice voices and
practitioners in Asia who will explore practically what it might look
like to love our neighbours as radically as Jesus did."

Sizer has in the past worked strenuously to turn Christian populations in South-East Asia against Christian Zionism.

Sizer during his Hong Kong spiel; squint at the backdrop

For example through translations of his works, so it would not be surprising to learn that he carried on his anti-Israel proselytism while attending the conference.

I believe, incidentally, that the Beijing authorities rejected his application for a visa to China, probably owing to their crackdown on Christians.

As CEO of Peacemaker Mediators Sizer is no less peripatetic than he was as the spiritual leader of Christ Church, Virginia Water. (It seems he'll be coming to the Antipodes next March.)

Nice work if you can get it, as one of his followers pointed out the other day, with a query to which the vaguest of responses was forthcoming:

More recent smears against Israel include this casual suggestion of racism:

All nations have the right and obligation to decide their own immigration policies, vicar. How many asylum seekers has your seemingly beloved Iran taken in?

Surely you have read the Book of Job, being a clergyman. Recall this verse?

“I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the cause of him that I did not know” (Job 29:15-17).

Not a word there about the blind, lame, poor or disadvantaged having to be Jewish to qualify for Jewish kindness.

And in the same vein the modern state of Israel performs humanitarian acts large-scale and small to countries and peoples the world over, including citizens of "enemy" nations such as Syria. Remember when Israel offered aid to your seemingly beloved Iran following an earthquake in 2003? And the mad mullahs, preferring to let their citizens suffer rather than be aided by the Zionist Entity, turned the offer down?

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

'.... Ayman Elkasrawy got the phone call late on a Sunday night in February. An incredulous friend was on the line, with a strange and troubling question.

“Did you pray for the killing of the Jews?”

The friend sent him an online article about Masjid Toronto, the downtown mosque where Elkasrawy worked as an assistant imam. It included a video: rows of Muslim worshippers standing under fluorescent lights, their eyes closed and hands cupped. At the front of the crowded room was Elkasrawy, dressed in white and praying to God in Arabic.

“O Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare not one of them,” read the article’s translation of his prayers. “O Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews!”

But he was shaken by the English translation. “I was surprised,” he says. “When I (saw) that, I even doubted myself. Did I say that?” ....

At a time when white supremacists are mobilizing across North America, the fight against anti-Semitism has taken on renewed urgency. But this is a story that is far more tangled than it first appeared.

It is about an imam who made hurtful mistakes that he could not adequately explain. But it is also about the slipperiness of language — especially in a climate of viral misinformation, polarized debate and geopolitical conflicts that have found fresh battlegrounds in Canada.

Elkasrawy’s prayers were undeniably problematic, but they were also distorted to fit a certain narrative that gave his words added potency amid rising anti-Islamic sentiment.

In a controversy that hinges on his words, a central question was never fully investigated: Did Elkasrawy really say Jews were filth? Did he really call for them to be killed?

According to several Arabic experts contacted by the Star, the answer is no....'

Monday, 23 October 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The continuing Arab refusal – aided and abetted by the United Nations – to recognise the international legitimacy of the Balfour Declaration 100 years after it was first issued on 2 November 1917 – remain the greatest obstacles to resolving the Jewish–Arab conflict.

The current Arab culprits are the Arab League, the PLO and Hamas who unconditionally reject the binding international legal validity of the Balfour Declaration. However their efforts to nullify the Balfour Declaration would have been undermined long ago had the United Nations not lent its support by propagating a fictitious narrative of the Jewish-Arab conflict.

United Nations involvement has occurred through the “Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” which has published “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” containing numerous false and misleading facts on the Jewish-Arab conflict which remain uncorrected.

“the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

This acceptance of the Balfour Declaration by the Allied Powers was subsequently embraced by all 51 member countries of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 – when the terms of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated in the preamble to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
Those 51 countries were:

Article 25 of the Mandate was subsequently invoked on 23 September 1922 to restrict the Jewish National Home to just 22 per cent of the territory encompassed by the Mandate – whilst the remaining 78 per cent eventually became an Arabs-only, Jew-free State in 1946 – now called Jordan.

The Jews reluctantly accepted these decisions – but the Arabs never have. The Arabs (with the exception of Jordan and Egypt) still claim 100 per cent of former Palestine by refusing to recognise the Jewish State.

Peace cannot occur until the UN demands Arab recognition of the Balfour Declaration. The UN’s continuing refusal to do so is truly shameful.

Sunday, 22 October 2017

Ontario's "feminist" premier Kathleen Wynne is aghast at this affront to "diversity" and "progress" (see video here), but what takes the cake is the mealy-mouthed reaction of Alberta's premier Rachel Notley, put on the spot (and rightly) by a reporter who asks what she, as a feminist, thinks of the niqab.

Thursday, 19 October 2017

From the British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton and other European intellectuals, the so-called Paris Statement regarding the current malaise of Europe and what must be done to overset it. ( "We ask all Europeans to join us in rejecting the utopian fantasy of a multicultural world without borders")

Inter alia (emphasis added), from a long and heartfelt document which deserves to be read and pondered in its entirety:

"Europe belongs to us, and we belong to Europe. These lands are our home; we have no other. The reasons we hold Europe dear exceed our ability to explain or justify our loyalty. It is a matter of shared histories, hopes and loves. It is a matter of accustomed ways, of moments of pathos and pain. It is a matter of inspiring experiences of reconciliation and the promise of a shared future. Ordinary landscapes and events are charged with special meaning—for us, but not for others. Home is a place where things are familiar, and where we are recognized, however far we have wandered. This is the real Europe, our precious and irreplaceable civilization....

The patrons of the false Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing. Moreover, they are ignorant of the true sources of the humane decencies they themselves hold dear—as do we. They ignore, even repudiate the Christian roots of Europe. At the same time they take great care not to offend Muslims, who they imagine will cheerfully adopt their secular, multicultural outlook. Sunk in prejudice, superstition and ignorance, and blinded by vain, self-congratulating visions of a utopian future, the false Europe reflexively stifles dissent. This is done, of course, in the name of freedom and tolerance....

The true Europe is at risk because of the suffocating grip that the false Europe has over our imaginations. Our nations and shared culture are being hollowed out by illusions and self-deceptions about what Europe is and should be. We pledge to resist this threat to our future. We will defend, sustain and champion the real Europe, the Europe to which we all in truth belong....

As the nation states of Europe became more established and distinct, a shared European identity became stronger. In the aftermath of the terrible bloodshed of the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, we emerged with an even greater resolve to honor our shared heritage. This testifies to the depth and power of Europe as a civilization that is cosmopolitan in a proper sense. We do not seek the imposed, enforced unity of empire. Instead, European cosmopolitanism recognizes that patriotic love and civic loyalty open out to a wider world....

The true Europe has been marked by Christianity.... The autonomy of what we call civil society became a characteristic feature of European life. Moreover, the Christian Gospel does not deliver a comprehensive divine law, and thus the diversity of the secular laws of the nations may be affirmed and honoured without threat to our European unity. It is no accident that the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been accompanied by renewed efforts to establish political unity—an empire of money and regulations, covered with sentiments of pseudo-religious universalism, that is being constructed by the European Union....

The true Europe has never been perfect. The proponents of the false Europe are not wrong to seek development and reform, and there is much that has been accomplished since 1945 and 1989 that we should cherish and honor. Our shared life is an ongoing project, not an ossified inheritance. But the future of Europe rests in renewed loyalty to our best traditions, not a spurious universalism demanding forgetfulness and self-repudiation. Europe did not begin with the Enlightenment. Our beloved home will not be fulfilled with the European Union. The real Europe is, and always will be, a community of nations at once insular, sometimes fiercely so, and yet united by a spiritual legacy that, together, we debate, develop, share—and love....The true Europe is in jeopardy. The achievements of popular sovereignty, resistance to empire, cosmopolitanism capable of civic love, the Christian legacy of humane and dignified life, a living engagement with our Classical inheritance—all this is slipping away. As the patrons of the false Europe construct their faux Christendom of universal human rights, we are losing our home....

The false Europe also boasts of an unprecedented commitment to equality. It claims to promote non-discrimination and the inclusion of all races, religions and identities. Here, genuine progress has been made, but a utopian detachment from reality has taken hold. Over the past generation, Europe has pursued a grand project of multiculturalism. To demand or even promote the assimilation of Muslim newcomers to our manners and mores, much less to our religion, has been thought a gross injustice. A commitment to equality, we have been told, demands that we abjure any hint that we believe our culture superior. Paradoxically, Europe’s multicultural enterprise, which denies the Christian roots of Europe, trades on the Christian ideal of universal charity in an exaggerated and unsustainable form. It requires from the European peoples a saintly degree of self-abnegation. We are to affirm the very colonization of our homelands and the demise of our culture as Europe’s great twenty-first century glory—a collective act of self-sacrifice for the sake of some new global community of peace and prosperity that is being born.

There is a great deal of bad faith in this thinking. Most in our governing classes doubtless presume the superiority of European culture—which must not be affirmed in public in ways that might offend immigrants. Given that superiority, they think that assimilation will happen naturally, and quickly. In an ironic echo of the imperialist thinking of old, Europe’s governing classes presume that, somehow, by the laws of nature or of history, ‘they’ will necessarily become like ‘us’—and it is inconceivable that the reverse might be true. In the meantime, official multiculturalism has been deployed as a therapeutic tool for managing the unfortunate but ‘temporary’ cultural tensions....

Today, Europe is dominated by an aimless materialism that seems unable to motivate men and women to have children and form families. A culture of repudiation deprives the next generation of a sense of identity. Some of our countries have regions in which Muslims live with an informal autonomy from local laws, as if they were colonialists rather than fellow members of our nations. Individualism isolates us one from another. Globalization transforms the life prospects of millions. When challenged, our governing classes say that they are merely working to accommodate the inevitable, adjusting to implacable necessities. No other course is possible, and it is irrational to resist. Things cannot be otherwise. Those who object are said to suffer nostalgia—for which they deserve moral condemnation as racists or fascists. As social divisions and civic distrust become more apparent, European public life grows angrier, more rancourous, and no one can say where it will end. We must not continue down this path. We need to throw off the tyranny of the false Europe. There is an alternative....

In this moment, we ask all Europeans to join us in rejecting the utopian fantasy of a multicultural world without borders. We rightly love our homelands, and we seek to hand on to our children every noble thing that we have ourselves received as our patrimony. As Europeans, we also share a common heritage, and this heritage asks us to live together in peace as a Europe of nations. Let us renew national sovereignty, and recover the dignity of a shared political responsibility for Europe’s future."

The conversation runs from her take on the morally compromised Left through the destructive foolishness of American Jewry's universalistic outlook and thrust ("Jewish values are not universalistic, they are particularist ... they have universalist applications") to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I wish this 20-minute interview with a wise and courageous woman, a Jewish heroine of our time, could be mandatory viewing for the current crop of leaders of Progressive Judaism in Australia, who seem have hitched their wagon to every leftist political position going, regardless of the end result.

Monday, 16 October 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

UNESCO’s decision to admit “Palestine” as a member state in 2011 in apparent breach of UNESCO’s own Constitution has come back to bite UNESCO with a vengeance – as America and Israel now give formal notice of their intention to quit UNESCO on 31 December 2018.

State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert asserted America’s decision was not taken lightly and reflected US concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.

American arrears owing for UNESCO dues now total US$550 million.

UNESCO anti-Israel decisions since “Palestine” was admitted to UNESCO membership have included:

1. January 2014 – the cancellation of an exhibition at its Paris headquarters on the Jewish presence in the land of Israel

2. October 2016 – disregarding any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount - only referring to it by its Muslim names – then several weeks later - passing a softer version of the resolution that referred to the Western Wall by its Jewish name - though still ignoring Judaism's ties to the site.

UNESCO appears to have acted outside the terms of its own Constitution in admitting “Palestine” to membership.

That decision was open to possible legal challenge for two reasons:

1. Only states can be admitted to UNESCO under Article II (2) of UNESCO’s Constitution - and “Palestine” was not a state,

2. 129 votes from 193 members were required to admit “Palestine” – not the 107 votes received from those “present and voting”. 14 had voted against, 52 abstained and another 21 were absent from the vote.

UNESCO’s questionable and highly controversial decision should have been referred to the International Court of Justice under Article XIV (2) of UNESCO’s Constitution to determine whether:

1. “Palestine” was a “State” entitled to membership of UNESCO.

2. 129 votes or 107 votes were required for “Palestine’s” admission to UNESCO

UNESCO did not seek this judicial interpretation – which would have cost it US$100000 – even though I presented it with detailed reasons why it should.

Had the International Court ruled “Palestine’s” admission to UNESCO was unlawful – then the American funding tap would have been turned on again five years ago.

Instead UNESCO lobbied the Americans to cough up what amounted to 22 per cent of UNESCO’s annual budget. That lobbying was never going to succeed – since the chances of Congress backing away from America’s domestic law mandating the suspension of funds to any United Nations Agency that accepted the PLO as a full member – outside of negotiations with Israel – was doomed to failure

Australia’s Head of Mission – Ms Gita Kamath – gave Australia’s reasons for its negative vote at the time:

“Our decision to vote against reflects Australia’s strong concern that consideration of Palestinian membership in UNESCO is premature. The matter of Palestinian membership of the UN has recently been placed before the UN Security Council for its consideration. We should allow the United Nations Security Council process to run its course rather than seek first to address this question in different UN fora.

Our decision also reflects our concerns with the possible implications of a successful vote on UNESCO funding.”

UNESCO would not be in the parlous financial straits and ignominious position it finds itself today had its member States heeded Australia’s sage advice.

UNESCO’s foray into the Arab-Jewish conflict has been an unmitigated disaster.

Sunday, 15 October 2017

Not to mention proxy Hezbollah's activity in Venezuela and Nicaragua ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jLayftxAGU

Writes Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the United States Treasury, and a senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, inter alia:

'... Decertification ... will plunge Iran and the other parties involved in the nuclear deal into a state of limbo. It will prompt all sides to consider what the deal is worth to them, and what further compromises they may be willing to make to satisfy the national interests of the United States, as laid out by the Trump administration....

...Tehran’s broader efforts to dominate the Middle East are also intensifying. From the deployment of its Revolutionary Guard Corps to far-flung corners of the region to the conscripting of Shiite irregular proxies to fight or hold territory in Syria and Iraq, Iran’s footprint continues to grow.

For American policymakers, Iran’s bid for regional hegemony is just as troubling as its nuclear ambitions. Together, they represent a dual Iranian strategy that cannot be separated, despite the P5+1’s efforts to do so back in 2015. This is why Trump should build on his decertification announcement with the rollout of a new Iran policy that actively counters these activities.

[T]he timing is fortuitous. The administration is slated to complete and roll out its Iran Policy Review by October 31st. If the policy lives up to the hints dropped by senior officials, the United States will once again push back on Iran’s malign behavior. If done right, it will do so wherever possible, and by using every pressure point available....

From there, Washington is also expected to actively target Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful and active proxy. The Trump administration and Congress have already signaled they will take aim at Hezbollah’s economic interests, while also weakening their positions across the Middle East.

Beyond that, Washington can take further steps to strengthen America’s allies, such as the Sunni Arab states and Israel, who are also willing to challenge Iranian aggression. This could mean greater intelligence-sharing and bilateral cooperation, but could also include new hardware and military capabilities. More broadly, the United States must signal that Iranian threats to its allies will be seen as threats to the United States itself...'

'President Trump’s argument that Iran is violating “the spirit of the deal” was met with ridicule and contempt in Iran, but it’s accurate. The goal of the agreement was not to give Iran legitimacy and the ability to increase its involvement in terror and the development of advanced weapons. The agreement was also not intended to allow Iran to threaten America’s allies, principally Saudi Arabia and Israel. If that’s the result of the deal, then cancelling or at least dramatically strengthening the JCPOA must be the right path.Zarif’s article should remind us of the central problem with the Iranian regime—it hasn’t forgone, even for a moment, the desire to turn into a dominant nuclear power and to sow chaos in the Middle East. Its members are sophisticated players and so they understand that the path to achieving their ambitions doesn’t just go through underground reactors but also through the realms of media and diplomacy. That’s their way of buying time and strengthening their position, and they won’t stop until they are stopped.'

Thursday, 12 October 2017

As I noted last week, anti-Israel events are sprouting thick and fast
in the countdown to 2 November and the centenary of the Balfour
Declaration, with Israel-denouncing Christians doing their share of the
participating.

One such event that caught my eye was that held on 7 October at the
British Library. Sponsored by the anti-Israel Middle East Monitor, it
was entitled "Palestine, Britain and the Balfour Declaration 100 Years
on".

Professor
Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford
University, was the keynote speaker, and you can read about the rest of
the panelists, and their highly biased offerings, here, where there is also a video and several photos of the event. Begins the account:

"The
grey weather did not deter the hundreds of attendees who arrived early
on Saturday morning at the British Library in London to attend MEMO’s
conference to commemorate 100 years since the Balfour Declaration. A
heavily subscribed event, the conference took a detailed look at
Britain’s role in the creation of Israel, past and present, showcasing
an alternative narrative to the celebrations promised by British Prime
Minister Theresa May.

Attendees
were able to purchase books on the Palestinian issue, including those
shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2017 and indulge in
refreshments before being ushered into the auditorium. They were
welcomed by Dr Daud Abdullah, the Director of MEMO, who expressed the
importance of recognising the Balfour Declaration for what is was."

Professor
Penny Green of Queen Mary’s University of London, chaired the first
session, journalist Peter Oborne (notorious for his obsession with
Britain's so-called "Israel Lobby") the second, and Corbynista ex-Labour cabinet minister Clare Short [read me here] the third.

"Zionism was a settler colonial movement and the state of Israel its progeny, is a settler colonial state,"

"Journalist David Cronin [associate editor of the Electronic Intifada, folks], looked at strategies used to oppose the Israeli
occupation, namely the use of boycotts. He pointed out that Balfour had
an aversion to boycotts, namely because of the powerful symbolic nature
that withholding payment presented. He advocated that the international
community and Palestinians should harness the power of boycotts to
bring about a change in Israel."

And these (emphasis added):

"Dr
Jacob Cohen [praised by no less an antisemite than Gilad Atzmon here], who joined the Zionist movement at the age of 16 before
leaving it four years later, also praised how the Boycott Divestment
Sanctions (BDS) movement had expanded its international influence and
hoped that the global community would continue such long-term campaigns.
He was heckled during his speech when he accused of Israel of
perpetuating conflict in order to receive foreign aid and weapons
investment, an argument the majority of the audience applauded.

When
the discussion opened to the floor, a pro-Israeli commentator spoke in
defence of Israel, alleging that it had made peace with Arab countries,
retreated from Gaza and was prepared to sacrifice it’s land for peace.
Other questioners spoke positively of the support for the Palestine
movement and encouraged all listeners to transform their attendance into
activism.

As
the attendees filed out of the auditorium, many expressed their
gratitude to MEMO for hosting such a comprehensive event that had
invited speakers from all over the world, to discuss the origins of an
enduring conflict that has affected millions of people."

There
he sits, if I'm not mistaken, in the centre of this photo of the audience, that same
"pro-Israel commentator", I'll wager, namely the intrepid Jonathan
Hoffman (good onya, sir!):

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

Have you seen this video (English subtitles) from Israelly Cool? If not, have a look and spread its fame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=RRpDGA_ZAtM

Meanwhile, here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

There is little hope that reconciliation talks between Hamas and
Fatah will end a decade of bitter internecine feuding which has seen a
parallel entrenchment of territorial divisions between them in Gaza and
the West Bank.

Gazan and West Bank Arab populations will continue
to be the victims of this ongoing power play as both groups remain
bitterly opposed to recognising Israel as the Jewish National Home.

Elections
have not been held since January 2006 when Hamas won a large majority
in the new Palestinian parliament trouncing the governing Fatah party.

Since
then, conflict between Hamas and Fatah has seen any prospect of the
peaceful creation of a second Arab State – in addition to Jordan – in
the territory encompassed by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
– consigned to the diplomatic scrapheap.

Now it seems that
Hamas and Fatah are seeking yet again to come to some form of
reconciliation
– which will only be about preserving their own
organisations and retaining their current powers and privileges and have
nothing to do with giving their long-suffering populations any say in
their own future.

Clearly whatever game of musical chairs they
intend to play – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made
Israel’s position very clear – reportedly stating that as part of any
reconciliation Hamas must:

1. recognise Israel

2. dismantle Hamas’s military wing and

3. Break off ties with Iran.

Any hope of these conditions being met is a pipe dream. Netanyahu also declared:

“We
expect everyone who talks about a peace process to recognize the State
of Israel and, of course, the Jewish state. We cannot accept fake
reconciliation on the Palestinian side that comes at the expense of our
existence.”

Again this is simply not going to happen.

Whatever
window dressing occurs between Hamas and Fatah will therefore be of no
consequence in resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict or in influencing
President Trump to believe that such steps are capable of contributing
to the President successfully brokering an end to that 100 years old
conflict.

The absence of elections for eleven years has
created a void that has had disastrous consequences for the Gazan and
West Bank Arab populations – impacting the lives of every single Gazan
and West Bank Arab.

The likelihood of free and fair elections continues to be a distant dream.

PLO
leader Yasser Arafat – perhaps in an unguarded moment – made the
following promise back in May 1983 when interviewed in Middle East
Review:

“When the occupied territories are liberated, we
will move towards a referendum that will set up constitutionally a
framework for special relations between Jordan and liberated Palestine.”

That referendum has failed to materialise despite the fact that since 2007:

1. Hamas has controlled 100% of Gaza and its entire population

2.
The PLO – of which Fatah is the major member – has controlled 40% of
the West Bank within which 95% of the total West Bank Arab population
currently reside.

Arafat’s referendum proposal should be implemented – if elections are once again denied.
Holding
this referendum would indicate a willingness by both Hamas and Fatah to
work towards a peaceful resolution of the Jewish-Arab conflict -
working arm in arm with Jordan – rather than continuing their
belligerent confrontation with Israel – both militarily and
diplomatically – that has marked the last 10 years.

Such a
referendum would send a clear signal to President Trump that there could
indeed be some possible light at the end of the Gazan terrorist-tunnels – that a framework involving Jordan represents the best possible way
forward out of the current impasse.

Seeing the referendum realised remains the challenge for Trump to pursue.

Sunday, 8 October 2017

Recently, on social media, I was engaged in a rather heated, albeit polite, discussion regarding the wearing of the burqa and whether it has any place in western society. The topic of a burqa ban (and how racist such a ban's proponents are) had been raised by a staunch feminist who's been president of a non-Orthodox Jewish congregation, is a women's rights crusader and a supporter of the leftist cause generally, including the whole anti-"Islamophobia" shtik.

I vehemently disagreed with her defence of the burqa as apparel that represents a woman's right to choose whatever she wishes to wear. I pointed out that not only does this humiliating, imprisoning, stifling sunlight-depriving tent represent male ownership and oppression of women, but that it deprives the wearer's unborn babies of vitamin D, and that if animals were made to peer at the world through a muslin grill there would be a general public outcry against cruelty involved.

Needless to say, most (not all) of the commenters on that social media thread, male and female alike, seemed to prefer her position to mine. (The unborn babies, I was reminded, have the benefit of vitamin D-added cow's milk in bottles.)

I write "needless to say" because the commenters are largely left-leaning and in some cases members of the so-called "Progressive" strand of Judaism, whose 21st-century male and female rabbis and zealots seem keen (riding roughshod over any dissension) to commit that strand to the espousal of every fashionable political cause under the sun, but who, when it's a choice between condemning Islamic misogyny and remaining shtum, will remain shtum or berate as "racist" those who do sprak out. But the "misogyny" of Orthodox Judaism, especially strictly Orthodox Judaosm? Fair game, of course.

It's
a lamentable characteristic of left-liberals that in "promoting
diversity", non-western cultural norms are tolerated, even when they run
counter to liberal values and women's rights. (Just look at the ultra-crazy path paved in whacko Sweden!)

As I've pointed out before, the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission in Australia was set up
originally to fight antisemitism. But like the ADL in the United States
it has expanded its remit to fight all forms of racism and
discrimination. And not only that. It's an avowed promoter of "diversity". Its logo proudly proclaims so.

'People
talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they
must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off
the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can
‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of
self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then,
whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in
equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in
both....' [Emphasis added.]

As I've pointed out before, the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission in Australia was set up
originally to fight antisemitism. But like the ADL in the United States
it has expanded its remit to fight all forms of racism and
discrimination. And not only that. It's an avowed promoter of "diversity". Its logo proudly proclaims so.

But what
contradictory positions such an approach can lead to, one of the most
obvious being, of course. the loggerheads course between denouncing
Islamophobia and championing the rights of women.

As pointed out by Gavin Mortimer in the Spectatorhere, there are signs that, in recent atrocities against westerners, females have been singled out for slaughter:

'....The
Islamists are deliberately targeting
women because in their minds they represent empowerment and
enlightenment, and also immodesty. Three young women were among the
eight people stabbed to death during the London Bridge attack in June,
and many more were wounded, including an Australian, who recalled her
attacker screamed “Stop living this life” as he slashed at her throat.

In the hundred years since female
emancipation began gaining momentum in the West, there have been
significant reactions in the Islamic world. The first was the creation
in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, its founder, Imam Hassan
al-Banna,
demanding an “Islamic renewal” faced with creeping Western influence. Al-Banna
wasn’t a fan of the West, especially not Mae West, nor Jazz or bobbed
haircuts, raging against the importation of “half-naked women into these
regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance
halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels,
their whims.”

One of the Brotherhood’s most influential
figures in the post-war period was Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who went to
the USA on a year’s scholarship in 1949 and returned home radicalised.
Another World War had imbued a fresh generation of young western women
with confidence and Qutb was disgusted by the female students he
encountered in Colorado. He wrote of attending a dance where “the room
convulsed with the feverish music…dancing naked legs filled the hall,
arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips”.' (See also here)

American feminist Professor Phyllis Chesler is a woman of wisdom and integrity, whose latest article deserves a wide readership. A feminist since the 1960s who deplores the double standards of today's "feminists", she has much to say on various aspects of the double standards syndrome and its consequences.

Inter alia:

'Our original feminist vision was radical and transformative.
We believed in universal human rights. We envisioned multicultural
diversity but we were not multicultural relativists....

Like other American
radical feminists, I was active in the civil-rights and anti-war
movements. Unlike other feminists, I had “once lived in a harem in
Afghanistan.” This is the opening line of my book, An American Bride in
Kabul. Quite unexpectedly, I lived in a polygamous household in very
posh purdah—which meant I was not allowed out without a male escort.
Quite surprisingly, my father-in-law had three wives and 21
children—facts my Westernized husband failed to mention during our long
American college courtship.

When I was 20, I saw Afghan women
stumbling around in burqas—sensory-deprivation isolation chambers,
ambulatory body bags. These ghosts were forced to sit at the back of the
bus. This was long before the Taliban arose. I remembered that sight
even when I critiqued American sexism, racism, homophobia—and imperial
overreach....

In the early to
late 1970s, I delivered feminist speeches in Israel, began working with
Israeli feminists; led a delegation of left-wing and feminist
journalists to Israel; obtained signatures opposing the UN’s
“Zionism=racism” resolution; co-organized a press conference and then a
legendary conference about feminism and anti-Semitism and about women
and Judaism; co-founded the first feminist Passover Seder which we held
in my Manhattan apartment—and created Jewish-feminist life-cycle events.
I also worked with Muslim dissidents and artists from Israel, Egypt,
Kuwait, Iran, Lebanon, etc. During this time, I published three more
feminist books....

I can
tell you that anti-Semitism—Jew-hatred—is not new among feminists. I
first encountered it in the early 1970s among radical feminists and
lesbians and ... immediately
began exposing it.

However, a new and what I describe as a “faux
feminism” has arisen in the last 30 years, a postmodern and postcolonial
feminism that passionately condemns Christianity and Judaism as the
greatest danger to women’s rights but dares not critique religiously
supremacist Islam for this same reason; an intersectional “faux
feminism” that condemns only Western imperialism and refuses to
acknowledge the long history of Islamic imperialism, colonialism,
slavery, anti-black racism, and religious and gender apartheid; a “faux
feminism” that is far more concerned with the alleged occupation of
Palestine than it is with the occupation of women’s bodies, faces,
minds, and genitalia world-wide–including those women who are being
forcibly face-veiled, death-threatened, and honor killed in the disputed
territories.

Women’s studies associations, national feminist
organizations—many feminist Jews—are not merely “politically correct”;
they have become “Islamically correct.” They are currently more
concerned with the religious sanctity of head and face veiling than they
are with FGM, forced face-veiling, honor-based violence, polygamy,
child marriage, and honor killing in the West. Not only have faux
feminists betrayed the Jews—in the name of anti-racism, they have also
abandoned tribal and immigrant women of color—Muslims, Sikhs, and
Hindus—to barbaric misogyny. Above all, they have abandoned the most
heroic ex-Muslim, Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu feminist dissidents, both in
the developing world and in the West.

And that’s the tragedy—that
so many Western feminists have become such conformists. They are no
longer independent thinkers. Faux feminists have also been persuaded
that Islam is a “race,” not an ideology or a religion; that America’s
historic enslavement of black Africans, and South Africa’s apartheid
regime, is exactly the same as alleged Israeli discrimination against
Arab Palestinians, including Jew-hating bomb makers and terrorists with
blood on their hands.

Fundamentalists are trying to destroy what feminists have accomplished....

The battle for women’s rights is central to the
battle for Western values. It is a necessary part of true democracy.
Here, then, is exactly where the greatest battle of the 21st century is
joined.

.... Like many people, I
had assumed that the world’s hatred of Jews had ended, that Jewish
history would never again repeat itself. I was wrong. Those who still
believe that Jewish history can never again repeat itself must dispense
with that illusion. Jewish history has always repeated itself and may
continue to do so until the coming of the Messiah.

One of the
things that’s new about the “new” anti-Semitism is that it is coming to
us both from the Islamic world and from the Western intelligentsia—and
this time it’s global, and 24/7, via videos, the internet, cable vision,
doctored footage, etc.

....In 2003, I published the first edition
of The New Anti-Semitism. I wrote that anti-Zionism is the
new-Anti-Semitism—and I held the Western intelligentsia responsible for
their alliance with Islamic-style Jew-hatred. My Berkeley-based editor
fought with me about this. Back in 2003, what I was saying was
considered heresy. It still is.....'

Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs

Two stalwarts go sleuthing:

For their findings cliick on image

"The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine"

To read the research report click on image

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'Rod Liddle (2018)

Pro-Israel Down Under

Shalom and Welcome to my blog!I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page ishere

'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011)Scroll to end for more quotations

Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop?

Click image for link

Balfour and Beyond

Click image for link

Try this for Sizer

Sizer 101. Click image for link

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

BDS is Antisemitic

Click image to learn why

The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS

Click image for link

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

"Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah"

To read more click image

Maps of Mendacity & Mischief

Click image to learn why

These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 – intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 – and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced – has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today.David Singer (2016)

How They Twist the Truth!

Click image for more on the lies

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth.David Singer (2016)

Exposing Lies

Cliick image for link

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years?David Singer (2016)

Telling the Truth

Click image for link

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.Andrew Roberts (historian)

A voice of courage & reason

He knows, y'know

An Aussie demo against BDS

On the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016)

An awkward fact for some!

Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012)

BDS hypocrisy!

Click image for link

Want more?

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Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

A nuclear Iran threatens our existence

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.Eric Hoffer (1968)

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אם תרצו , אין זו אגדה

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs...Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975)

I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe.Oriana Fallaci

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves.Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies.George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970)

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

About Me

I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in
politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair.
Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html

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The spiritual awakening which Jews experienced almost without exception last June must not be allowed to become a sealed and finished episode.... Support must be rallied among men of goodwill and their governments if we are to reach that secure and just peace in the attainment of which Israel has never ceased to believe. President Zalman Shazar (1968)

Our judicial system is one of the best in the whole world. Our democracy is the only one in the Middle East.... Just imagine, what would have happened if the Arabs had, like us, accepted the Partition resolution? There would be a Palestinian State living side by side in peace, security, and, I can add, prosperity with the State of Israel, 62 years later. [C]ome to Israel, and realize how small Israel is and what a wonderful place it is. Diplomat Gabriella Shalev (2010)

Israel's Arab citizens are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy genuine civic and religious rights. Religious freedom is protected in Israel as nowhere else, tragically, in the Middle East. And civil rights, of course, there's a supreme court judge who is an Arab, ministers including in my government who are Arabs, Druze, and members of parliament who are Arabs and so on. I would like to see more involvement of Arabs in civil life.Bibi Netanyahu on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show (5 Nov. 2017)